We… and Heaven
We… and Heaven
I want to speak to you today about heaven. We live on earth, but we are not earthly; we live in the world, but we are not of the world. We live in the world and know that love of the world is enmity with God, for the commandment says: “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15).
We live in the world and know that we are strangers in it. Our original homeland is heaven; it is the firm, everlasting homeland in which we will dwell without end. For this reason, the Church directs us toward heaven.
The Lord Christ Himself always directed us toward heaven; He wants our minds and hearts to be attached to heaven. He says to us: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21).
This heaven, when we pray, we always turn toward it and lift our eyes to heaven. The Church itself is built in the form of a dome as a symbol of heaven and is called the heavenly dome, and stars are painted on the ceilings of many churches as a symbol of heaven. The Church is considered a heaven, and the Tabernacle of Meeting was a symbol of heaven, as was also the Temple.
God wants us to think always of heaven, because if we think of the earth, we cling to the earth and become attached to it; but if we think of heaven, we become attached to it and love it.
If you think much about the world, you will love this world; and if you think about heaven, you will love heaven.
When Jacob the father of the patriarchs saw the angels and realized that he was in a holy place, he took the stone he had put under his head, consecrated it, and said: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17). Jacob felt that the house of God is a gate that leads to heaven.
We do not have an abiding city while we are on earth. Our fathers confessed that they were strangers on the earth and desired the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. The Apostle Paul says: “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Heaven is the dwelling place of the angels, and the Scripture always says, “the angels of heaven.” At the death of the Lord Christ, the hosts of heaven were praising. The Scripture also says: “For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door” (Matthew 28:2). Thus heaven is the place of the angels, and when God calls us to heaven, He also calls us to the fellowship of the angels. Therefore, the Lord Christ always speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, for He found people occupied with the earth and earthly kingdoms and the acquisition of dominion on earth, so He said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
He began to direct people toward the heavens. Whoever reads the Sermon on the Mount, which is the greatest constitution of Christianity, finds the phrase “the heavens” repeated many times. Its first statement is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). He also says: “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9).
The Lord Christ always directs us to heaven so that our thinking may be there. Our spiritual life weakens when our thinking about heaven decreases, and our love for the earth and material things increases as our thinking about the earth and material things increases.
Let your thinking about the earth and earthly matters be little, and let your thinking about heaven and heavenly matters increase, so that you may love God and heaven, which is said to be God’s throne, while the earth is His footstool.
God is truly present in both earth and heaven, but to demonstrate the insignificance and lowliness of the earth, He says of it that it is “His footstool.” As for heaven, He said that it is God’s throne and God’s seat, to show us the greatness of heaven in which divine glory is manifested and where God appears as a King whose will is obeyed.
Heaven, as the Scripture mentions, is a source of blessing and goodness. It says: “With the blessings of heaven above” (Genesis 49:25). When Isaac blessed his son, he said: “May God give you of the dew of heaven” (Genesis 27:28). The rain of heaven and the light of heaven are also symbols of blessing; therefore, the goodness of God was likened to rain upon the righteous and the wicked, the pure and the evil.
God adorned heaven with stars, planets, the sun, and the moon, and made it luminous so that people might love it.
Believers were likened to stars in glory and exaltation, and it was said that they shine like the stars forever and ever. God wants us to be like the stars, and He likened Himself to the sun, “the Sun of Righteousness” (Malachi 4:2). He also said: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
Heaven represents light, elevation, and purity; it represents the dwelling place of God. In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and He mentioned heaven before mentioning earth. In the human being, the spirit is likened to heaven and the body to earth. Within you there is something heavenly, which is the spirit—light, ascending upward, because it is not material and heavy like the earth.
In our other life, we will be given heavenly bodies, not these earthly bodies, because Paul says: “There are also celestial bodies” (1 Corinthians 15:40). It is beautiful that the Virgin Saint Mary is called “a second heaven.”
Heaven will be our eternal destiny. The Book of Revelation speaks to us about the heavenly Jerusalem and describes it with very beautiful descriptions: “The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light” (Revelation 21:23). It also says: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men” (Revelation 21:3).
In our prayers, we speak about the place to which we will go as the place from which sorrow and sighing have fled.
This is heaven. We must contemplate it, and contemplate the heavenly hosts, the cherubim and the seraphim. We must contemplate all the heavenly beings—the principalities, dominions, thrones, powers, angels, archangels, the spirits of the saints, and the triumphant Church.
God gave a simple glimpse of heaven to Saint John the Beloved in the Book of Revelation: “After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven” (Revelation 4:1), and he spoke of what he saw. At the time of the baptism, he saw something like a dove (John 3:32).
At the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, he saw the glory of God and said: “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).
Many have seen things in heaven and spoken about them. The Apostle Paul ascended to the third heaven, and his tongue was bound, and he said that there are things there: “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (2 Corinthians 2:9).
Heaven is beauty and delight beyond description. We weep for those who die while they are in a state of readiness, and if those who died were given the choice to return, they would refuse.
We always weep for the dead because we have not yet sensed the beauty of heaven, because we do not think about heaven; therefore, we weep for those who go to heaven. And if we say that they have departed to the heavenly glories, why then do we weep for them?
The most beautiful thing in heaven is the fellowship of Christ Himself—to be with Him at all times and to see Him face to face. We hear the hymn that is chanted by the one hundred and forty-four thousand virgins, and we see all that John saw in Revelation, and many other things that he could not express. We see what eye has not seen, and we hear what ear has not heard.
Our great love for the earth binds us to earthly lusts, and our lack of speaking about heaven goes back to the fact that we do not think about it and do not read about it.
The Lord Christ wanted to bind us to heaven and to its love, and He said: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:51), to show us that the food of life must come down from heaven. He also said: “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27).
The Lord Christ spoke about Himself as the only One who came down from heaven, because no one has ascended to heaven except He who came down from heaven.
In the story of the Ascension, the Lord Christ ascended into heaven, and a cloud received Him out of the sight of the disciples. While they were gazing steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, two men stood by them in white apparel and said: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
The Lord Christ who ascended into heaven will come a second time. The Scripture says that He will come on the clouds of heaven, surrounded by angels and the heavenly hosts, and accompanied by the spirits of the saints, and He will come with great glory to take us with Him to heaven.
This beautiful image—the Christ ascending into heaven and the image of His coming—remained firmly rooted in the hearts of Christians for a long time.
The children of God live spiritually in a likeness of the heavenly things; they live in the symbols that the Lord Christ mentioned about the heavenly realities, but they have not yet reached the true reality of that heaven.
You must always think about this heaven, and think more about the God of heaven, who is said to be higher than the heavens. It is also said: “He bowed the heavens also, and came down; with darkness under His feet. And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind” (Psalm 18:9–10).
The prophet looks to the heavens and says: “Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it!” (Isaiah 44:23).
When the disciples returned rejoicing that the demons were subject to them in His name, He said: “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).
I want you to take contemplation of heaven, even for a period of one week of your life. I want you to think about heaven and see where this contemplation and thinking will lead us.
We will rejoice in heaven and contemplate its inhabitants, its glory, and its attributes, and in all matters related to heaven that lead to heaven, the descriptions of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the descriptions of the people who live there. We will feel that these things have a presence in our personal lives, and we will work to befriend them. We will also feel that this heaven in which we will live is more beautiful than the present heavens, for it is said: “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1).
People spend tens of millions in order to reach a single star among the stars of heaven, and we can imagine the condition of those who live always in heaven, and not merely a part of this material heaven.
Our thoughts are still earthly and dusty, and a great effort and mighty work are required to rescue our thoughts from the earth and earthly things so that our thoughts may become heavenly.
I call you to make your thoughts heavenly, even for one day as an exercise. Leave earthly thoughts and abandon them when they come to you. I invite you to live for one day in the heavenly things, and you will see how your thoughts, desires, contemplations, and words become heavenly.
As a partial exercise, study something about the angels, their relationship to heaven and to God, and also their relationship to human beings. Take an idea about the people who ascended to heaven, and an idea about the work of God in heaven. When God created the creatures—not only the angels who are unseen—He also said: “the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air” (Genesis 9:2). The birds of the air came to symbolize the spiritual thoughts of people that ascend upward, for birds do not fly upward unless they are light.
We must turn to heaven from the heart, for those who loved it from the heart found the earth heavy upon them. And if we do not go to heaven completely, let us go to it with our thoughts and contemplations, and take an idea about it even if we do not enter it.
At least let us contemplate heaven from afar, love it, and have a relationship with the angels of heaven, the hosts of heaven, and the Lord of heaven.
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